Communicating Codes Through Song

When working a charrette in Jamaica, architect Steve Mouzon inadvertently inspired local children to set a recommendation for urban farming to song.

1 minute read

April 17, 2010, 11:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Steve was working in Rose Town, Jamaica, and he noticed that the town's walls were painted with parables. After talking with local elders to get the words right, he got someone on the charrette committee to paint their recommendation up on a fence: "Plant your yard with things you can eat, for why should your yard lay fallow while you spend more of your money at the grocery store?"

Steve writes, "I was standing to the side, listening to pieces of several conversations when a local architect stepped up to me in an animated fashion and said "Steve, you must come now! You must hear this!"

"Hear what?" I asked. "What is happening?" As we stepped through the door into the night air, I could hear them... the voices of children singing. This group of little children were taking these simple words on a wall that were never meant to have rhythm or rhyme, and they were turning them into a song!"

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